Intestinal issues are not just for us humans. Whereas the inflammatory bowel disease
(IBS) now afflicts some 1.4 million people in the U.S., a similar
condition often besets captive monkeys. But these animals are providing
new insights about a cure for this condition in both species—and that cure is worms.

Parkinson's disease appears to spread through the brain by means of a
simple, yet insidious mechanism, according to research to be published
Friday by University of Pennsylvania scientists.

When molecules of
a certain protein become corrupted in the brain, they can pass on their
distorted shape to healthy proteins through nothing more than physical
contact.

Like something out of a bad science-fiction movie, more
and more healthy proteins latch onto the ones that have gone bad,
adopting their "misfolded" configuration until deadly clumps build up in
brain cell after brain cell, the Penn team found in its study of lab
mice.

UNC researchers track a gene’s crucial role in orchestrating the
placement of neurons in the developing brain. Their findings help
unravel some of the mysteries of Joubert syndrome and other neurological
disorders.

Scientists at Indiana University and international collaborators have
found a way to link two hormones into a single molecule, producing a
more effective therapy with fewer side effects for potential use as
treatment for obesity and related medical conditions.

Tumor cells circulating in a patient's bloodstream can yield a great
deal of information on how a tumor is responding to treatment and what
drugs might be more effective against it. But first, these rare cells
have to be captured and isolated from the many other cells found in a
blood sample.

The brain holds in mind what has just been seen by synchronizing brain
waves in a working memory circuit, an animal study supported by the
National Institutes of Health suggests. The more in-sync such electrical
signals of neurons were in two key hubs of the circuit, the more those
cells held the short-term memory of a just-seen object.

Biologists are well-known for using lab rats in experiments, but a few may now have the chance to work with rats in a unique way.

A team of engineers has set up a system that lets lab rats control a human-shaped avatar in a virtual environment, while humans control a rat-size robot inside the rat's cage. The result? A six-foot human and a six-inch rat get to interact with each other remotely, and they get to each get to see either a virtual avatar or a robot that's close to their own size.

For mice, the Goliath of lung cancer has a vanquisher in the form of a tiny David.

In a study published in the November issue of Cancer Research, Yale
biology researchers Frank J. Slack and Andrea Kasinski revealed that
short strands of microRNA, non-coding RNA inhibiting protein
translation, were successful in both preventing and curing lung
adenocarcinoma in mice. The research is the first to propose that, in a
clinical trial using mice, microRNA can be used as a therapeutic to
suppress the activation and expression of oncogenic, or cancer-causing,
proteins.

Among the smaller but still important casualties of Hurricane Sandy were thousands of laboratory rodents, genetically altered for use in the study of heart disease, cancer and mental disorders like autism and schizophrenia, that drowned in basement rooms at a New York University research center in Kips Bay.

Primates' brains see the world through triangular grids, according to a new study published online Sunday in the journal Nature.

Scientists at Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory
University, have identified grid cells, neurons that fire in repeating
triangular patterns as the eyes explore visual scenes, in the brains of
rhesus monkeys.

Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have created the first true mouse model of typhoid infection. The development promises to advance the study of typhoid and the creation of new vaccines against the infection, which remains a major health threat in developing countries. The paper was published today in the online edition of the journal Cell.

Oregon Health & Science University's
development of a new gene therapy method to prevent certain inherited
diseases has reached a significant milestone. Researchers at the
university's Oregon National Primate Research Center
and the OHSU Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology have
successfully demonstrated their procedure in human cells. It's believed
that this research, along with other efforts, will pave the way for
future clinical trials in human subjects.

A quintessential English gentleman educated at Eton and a Japanese
orthopedic surgeon. Not the most likely of traveling companions, you
might think. But very soon the two of them will be journeying to
Stockholm to collect the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, for
research carried out on different continents, using different animal
species and decades apart, yet intimately linked. The work of both men
is elegant and beautiful and has one of the features that characterizes
the truly revolutionary in biology -- as soon as you understand it, it
seems so self-evident that it's hard to believe no one had ever thought
of it or done it before.

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have shown for the first
time in an animal model that vitamin C actively protects against
osteoporosis, a disease affecting large numbers of elderly women and men
in which bones become brittle and can fracture.

Recent
studies have linked caffeine consumption to a reduced risk of
Alzheimer’s disease, and a new University of Illinois study may be able
to explain how this happens. “We
have discovered a novel signal that activates the brain-based
inflammation associated with neurodegenerative diseases, and caffeine
appears to block its activity. This discovery may eventually lead to
drugs that could reverse or inhibit mild cognitive impairment,” said
Gregory Freund, a professor in the U of I’s College of Medicine and a
member of the U of I’s Division of Nutritional Sciences.